


Robot Moles Need Not Apply

by james



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Leverage, MCU Fusion - Fandom, Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Complete mesh of comics and movie canon plus no timeline, F/M, Humor, Multi, intoabar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:35:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24447436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/james/pseuds/james
Summary: Clint Barton walks into a bar owned by Laura's brother.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Clint Barton/Laura Barton
Comments: 69
Kudos: 503
Collections: A Ficathon Goes Into A Bar





	Robot Moles Need Not Apply

**Author's Note:**

> I totally stole this idea from tumblr. Thank you, internet stranger, for the idea.

Hardison was sitting at their favorite table, working. It had a good view of the bar, the dining area, the front door, and into the kitchen. It was his favorite, anyway, because Parker would argue that the ceiling had a view of everything, as well as offering concealment, and Eliot would just glare at him and point out he didn't need a _view_ to know who was in the place.

Hardison had recently discovered that mouthing Eliot's words back at him as he was saying them was an excellent way to make the man's nostrils flare in that way that said he was either projecting his punch to give you a head start blocking or running, or was thinking about throwing you onto the bed and reminding you that...something something, at that point Hardison was never listening anymore. Anything that led to Eliot flinging him onto the bed was a good thing, even if it included pissing him off, first.

Parker didn't like to be flung as a prelude to having sex, but she loved being flung in just about every other circumstance. He and Eliot were working out the details of a human-sized catapult; they really only needed to find a good place to put it where they could fling Parker to her heart's content with reasonable certainty they wouldn't end up breaking any of her bones.

Right at the moment those plans were on hold, because they were in-between cases and he and Parker were trying to figure out a way to convince Eliot they needed to take a vacation. Closing the bar for a month was easy enough – wasn't like they needed money, they could give all their employees a month's pay and everyone could have some time off. But Eliot liked having something to do – they'd suggested a beach resort where Hardison could lounge indoors and watch his lovers wander around in swimsuits. Eliot had countered with a camping trip; thank God Parker had just looked sad at him when they'd told her that she could not play with the wildlife.

Hardison was currently doing some research on options that would entertain them all, nobody would probably get hurt, and they could – okay not “stay out of trouble” but, you know, no vacation was perfect.

When an Avenger walked into the bar, Hardison realised two things. First, New York was the perfect choice for a vacation because they could let Parker rappel off some really tall buildings, they could steal that stupid necklace that Sophie kept saying she'd stolen once already and replaced with a forgery and Hardison _knew_ he'd stolen and sold on eBay three times already so what the hell, man.

But also, there was always some kind of freaky shit going on in New York City which would make Eliot happy. He might get to punch an alien. Hardison started to call over to Eliot and stopped, because Eliot was staring at the Avenger. Hardison looked back to see the Avenger dude – Hawkeye, and how awesome was this, he was totally pulling copies of the security feed and posting it to Avenger Sightings PNW. They'd have thousands of people trying to get into their bar-- Hardison blinked.

Hawkeye was standing just inside the door, staring back at Eliot. Hardison looked back, and then back again and he was swinging his head back and forth like a damn tennis ball because Eliot and Hawkeye were staring at each other, not moving, not doing anything, just...Eliot's eye was doing the sort of twitchy thing he only did when he was yelling at you to stop doing stupid shit, when he couldn't say anything out loud else he'd tip off the mark.

Hawkeye was going through a round of innocent expressions, and his lip twitched and a shoulder shrug and holy fucking Hell.

“How the fuck do you know _Hawkeye?_ ” Hardison yelled, out loud, and all the other patrons in the bar who were absolutely watching the same exchange he was, because _Hawkeye_ , all turned to stare at him.

Eliot took this as permission to dispense with the silent conversation, and said in that fake palcating tone that meant total utter bullshit was coming, “Hardison, I--” and Hardison shook his head, because no.

“You two are arguing with each other from across the damn bar, without saying a word, and you are not gonna stand there and tell me this isn't what it looks like.” Hardison gave Eliot one of his better pouts. “You know Hawkeye and you never told me, and you tell me not to hack into Stark's servers because you say you wouldn't protect me which is so amazingly hurtful, I don't even--”

Eliot smirked at him. “Haven't made it past the second wall, have you?”

Hardison glared. “ _Fourth_ firewall, and fuck you, because Hawkeye is standing _right here_ and you never said hey, let's invite Clint Barton over for dinner sometime to meet my friends and you can ask him to sign some shit.”

For a long moment Eliot just kept glaring at him, then finally he sighed and rubbed his face with one hand. There was no denying this, no denying anything, and Hawkeye was walking over – to _him_ , Hardison totally did a little chair dance of _I won and Eliot is wrong and owes me a forfeit._

“I'd be happy to sign whatever you like,” Hawkeye was saying, all gracious and grinning at him, already holding a Sharpie in his hand. They both glanced towards Eliot, and Hardison could hear the growl building, then Clint winked at Hardison and said, “Anything for my brother-in-law's family.”

There was the sound of something breaking, and Parker landed on the floor next to Hardison which still did not fail to give him a fucking heart-attack, please, Parker, can you use the fucking stairs just once.

Hardison looked over again at Eliot, who was cleaning up some broken glass. Eliot paused and signed something in ASL, which Hardison knew enough of to realise Eliot had said something extremely rude.

Well, okay, he knew Eliot well enough to know that. But he also knew the signs for 'never find the body.'

Then Parker was grabbing at Hardison's shirt, and tugging it off his body, which, what, what the fuck? 

“Normally I like a little foreplay, girl,” Hardison reminded her, but then she was handing his t-shirt to Hawkeye. _Brother-in-Law._

“You can sign this,” she said, then set the shirt down on the table and signed what she'd said, but Clint was already scribbling something on the shirt. It was long, and Hardison waited patiently, then leaned over when Clint spun it towards him.

“To my favorite brother-in-law's best friend, Alec Hardison, Tony says hi. -Love, Clint Barton, World's Best Archer.”

Hardison could hear Eliot thunking his head on the bar. Hardison ignored him, took out his phone, and took a picture of his shirt – with Clint, of course, for authentication.

Then he sent a text. _Chaos eat your fucking heart out._

~ ~ ~ ~

_Clint_

Finding him wasn't hard – it could have been tons easier if he'd asked Nat for the address. But then he'd have to deal with her talking about him owing her another favor, not to mention she would have also asked him, point blank, how he doesn't know where his own brother-in-law was.

She knew Eliot, so she knew perfectly well he wasn't a regular civilian, but when did she let logic and truth get in the way of harassing him? Mostly never. 

He could have also just asked JARVIS, but then Tony would ask him what was going on and who is Eliot and Clint really didn't want to deal with the circus that was Tony Stark – Clint laughed at his own irony, because circuses weren't really that bad, if they weren't evil. But Tony was a circus like no other, and just thinking about dealing with him sometimes made Clint exhausted.

So he hadn't asked JARVIS. Using his own computer-sleuthing skills would have tipped off the guy Eliot was working with-slash-maybe-seeing (according to Laura), and Clint had no idea how that would go down, so he'd ended up just doing it the old fashioned way.

First he snooped through his own kitchen, because Eliot kept in touch with Laura no matter where in the world he was. He found a postcard and a telephone number, which was enough to get him to Portland, Oregon. Once there, he found a library with actual Yellow Pages and started thumbing through until he found a bar.

When he walked into the bar, he saw Eliot immediately – and stopped, just inside the door. Probably outside of Eliot's range, but maybe not, but at this range Clint stood a better chance of hitting him back.

He didn't actually expect things to get thrown, but he also knew how Eliot felt about the trouble Clint sometimes, rarely, occasionally got into – you call a brother-in-law to help you _one time_ with a tiny local Russian Mafia and he doesn't let you forget it.

Was it his fault Nat was out of the country, and Clint hadn't, at the time, actually believed the other Avengers when they said they'd help him with those sorts of things? Getting lectured by Steve about team, and responsibility, and having one another's back was bad enough, but then Tony had just looked sad at him, like of course Tony believed that he, personally, wasn't trust-worthy enough to be called to help out, made it even worse. Thor had been confused and upset about missing out on a fight and had made Clint promise to send a pigeon next time something came up. 

But Eliot wanted to stay away from Clint's trouble, despite the fact he never actually did if Clint needed him. Good thing this was just a social call. He would have just called, but he wasn't exactly sure what was going on with Eliot and his team, so Clint has figured it would be best to swing by and ask him in person.

The way Eliot glared at him made Clint wonder if the bar was part of some con they were doing, except for how they'd owned this place for months, now, and his team tended to wrap things up a lot faster than that.

Clint tried to let him know he wasn't here to make trouble, or cause trouble, or anything at all that involved him, trouble, and anyone else. There was no trouble, he tried to convey with just his eyebrows – Eliot knew ASL, but Clint didn't know who else in the room might know it and he wasn't going to air the subject of his visit out in the open for everybody.

Then the guy in the corner, Eliot's teammate, jumped up and yelled at Eliot and Clint figured it was safe to come in closer.

A signed shirt, selfies, and a few very strange questions from Parker later, and Clint finally got to get close enough to Eliot to talk to him.

Well, Parker and Hardison had to get him to stop banging his head on the bartop and coax him over to sit at the table like a normal person. Then Eliot death-glared at him a bit more, probably just on principle, then he sighed. “What.”

“I'm wondering if you're free to babysit,” Clint asked. He had a chance to take Laura on a vacation – a nice resort in Mexico, privately owned by a handful of shell companies totally not owned at all by Stark, but only because he'd actually signed that one over to Pepper.

It was safe, about as safe as an Avenger could ask for, for a private vacation with his wife and _no kids_. 

Eliot was staring at him. It was half-death glare, half-I'm going to strangle you anyway glare, and Clint was really glad Laura had also inherited the Spencer glare, because she was sometimes the only one who could keep the kids in line when even Mom-glare didn't work.

“Is..that a no?” Clint asked. 

“You couldn't have called?” Eliot asked, still sort of sounding like he wanted to strangle Clint, but they'd tried that before and proven that they were fairly evenly matched as long as Nat didn't try to cheat by throwing things into the mess. 

Clint shrugged. He looked at Parker and Hardison. “I mean, I also wanted to meet your....” He wasn't sure what terminology Eliot was using, since he'd only mentioned them as teammates in his conversations with Laura. Laura had been the one to figure out it was more than that, but while she'd never asked her brother about it directly, she'd told Clint everything and basically given him the green light to interrogate him.

“Boy toy,” Hardison said. “We usually just call him our boy toy.”

Clint was delighted to see the way Eliot's death glare ratcheted up to a thousand as he turned to Hardison. Parker grinned, and leaned towards him, taking Eliot's arm. “He is fun to play with,” she said, and _wow_ Eliot just rolled his eyes at her before he glared at Hardison, then back at Clint. Eliot really liked her. Probably Hardison as well, despite the glare. Or because of it, Clint didn't want to judge.

“When?” was all Eliot asked him.

“Whenever you can. We have open reservations at one of Stark's secret places, but honestly, I was hoping to get us down there for our anniversary.”

Eliot nodded. “I can be there for a couple weeks, one week before and one after?”

“Sounds great!” Clint took out his phone and texted Laura. Once she knew the plans, there was no way either of them could end up breaking them, no matter what else might try to pop up.

There was a pause, then, as Clint knew Eliot was debating with himself about asking Clint how long was he in town, did he need a place to stay – do the family host thing, despite the fact he clearly didn't want to. No doubt because that would lead to long conversations between Clint and the two people on either side of Eliot.

Clint opened his mouth to invite himself to dinner anyway just to be annoying, when he felt a vibration in his wallet. He pulled it out, and indeed his Avengers card was buzzing.

“Guess I've got stuff to do,” he said. He nodded at Eliot, then at Hardison and Parker. “Don't be strangers.”

Before he turned to go, he caught sight of Hardison hitting Eliot in the arm. Eliot glared, but rubbed his arm instead of hitting him back.

Wow, Clint thought. It really was love.

Laura would be ecstatic. 

As long as they all survived what was apparently an infestation of robot moles attacking the West Coast.


End file.
